Process of manufacturing calendars



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J. CUSSONS. Process of Manufacturing Calendars. ,No. 240,099. Patented April 12,188l.

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. J. CUSSONS. Prncess of Manufacturing Calendars. No. 240,099. Patented April 12,188i.

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UNITED STATES PATENT OFFICE.

JOHN OUSSONS OF GLEN ALLEN, VIRGINIA.

PROCESS OF MANUFACTURING CALENDARS.

SPECIFICATION forming part of Letters Patent No. 240,099, dated April 12, 1881.

Application filed February 4, 1881. (Model) To all whom it may concern:

Be it known that I, JOHN GUSSONS, a subject of the Queen of Great Britain, residing at Glen Allen, in the county of Henrico and State of Virginia, have invented new and useful Improvements in Processes of Manufacturing Calendar-Tablets, of which the following is a specification.

My invention relates to an improvement in the manufacture of calendar-tablets complete in themselves and ready for use, and which may be readily and securely attached to a back board or card, and thus form a feature of attractiveness for advertisements.

To present the divisions of time in characters or form having a greater or less degree of prominence the year has been so divided, by methods more or less convenient, as to show at a glance a month, a week, or a single day; but it is to be noted that when the period shown is excessively brief the advantage thus gained is always at the expense of compactness and portability.

In the construction of calendars I claim nothing new in the idea of depicting divisions of time, dates, and figures in a conspicuous manner within a restricted area by dividing time into limited periods and giving to the representation of each period the space of a whole page, leaf, or sheet of paper. Many expedients have been employed to secure this end, and among them is the tableted calendars, the improvement in the manufacture of which is the object of my invention.

Tableted calendars have prior to my invention been made in several ways, the leaves composing the tablet being fastened together and to the back board by eyelets, wire links, clamps, paste, or thread stitching. methods are tedious and therefore expensive. Most of them are cumbersome, and at least one of them is impracticable.

Tablets secured together by eyelets, wire links, or clamp-fastenings are objectionable in that, besides their expensiveness, the leaves as torn off leave a ragged-edged butt, which mars the appearanceof the advertisement to which the tablet is attached, and none of these tablets are reasonably portable when bulked for shipment. The pasting of the .leaves together was introduced by myself about four All theseyears ago, but was soon discarded as useless. Stitching is in many respects the most desirable means of securing the tablet-leaves together; but as heretofore used there has been no provision for securing the thread ends, which therefore are gradually loosened and withdrawn as the sheets or leaves are detached, and the tablet soon falls to pieces.

Each tablet has heretofore been separately prepared, the knocking up, stacking, and attaching of the leaves entailing a vast amount of manipulation, which, of course, adds to the aggregate expense and involves a great waste of time.

My invention is designed to overcome each one of the hereinbeforeenumerated defects of calendar-tablets, and to unite, in a degree not heretofore known, the four essential qualities of durability, neatness, portability, and lowness of cost; and in order that it may be clearly understood I will now describe it in detail.

I have adopted what I believe to be the most useful, as it is probably the most ancient, calendar division of timenamely, that of the Roman calendars-the divisions of whicl1,each representing a month, may be regarded as establishing the time-unit which has been most acceptable to mankind during the past two thousand years, and all that has in the meantime been accomplished in the way of novelty in calendars has been limited to mechanical improvements upon the ancient idea. 4

Having adopted the monthly divisions of time, the printing and perfecting of the tablets is accomplishcd as follows: The printing is done, preferably, from thirteen different forms, and any number of presses, 'from one to thirteen, may be used on the work without increasing the cost of composition or stereotyping. One form consists of a number of rule-work blanks in printing only the borders, lines of sub-division of the space within the same, and the names of the days of the week; and this form is the basis of registration for the other twelve, and its impressions may be kept in stock from year to year, as it is always in date. This form may be printed in a different color from the others, so that the tables may be printed in two colors as easily and cheaply as in one. Each of the other twelve forms is composed of a number of precisely similar tabletdivisions, each comprising an arrangement of date numerals and the name of a single month to be printed in the spaces of the rule-work form. The tablet-divisions of a form all represent the same month, and are arranged in rows separated by suitable spaces, any number of these divisions being used as desired, and corresponding, of course, to the number of rule-work blanks.

A suitable number of sheets having been printed for all the months of the year they are gathered and laid in stacks or pads of twelve sheets in order, the top sheet of each stack being for January and the bottom sheet for December. These stacks are knocked up even and lightly glued at the register-edge, simply to hold the sheets together while being handled. The stacks or pads are now fed through a string sewing-machine running preferably at a speed of about nine hundred stitches per minute, and locking the stitch on the under side of the work, a seam being run from end to end of the pad at a short distance from the heads of each row ot'tablet-divisions, the stacks or pads being fed continuously with the edge of one following closely against the rear edge of the preceding, so that the stitching-thread is not cut for each pad, but unites alarge number in a belt. After the sewing the stacks or pads or belts of the same are fed between heavy steel-faced rollers, the effect of which is to mash in the rough edges of the perforations left by the needle, thus clamping and securing the thread and leaving the tablet smooth and glossy, their leaves having a sufficient tendency to adhere together to prevent the untidy appearance which such things have when the leaves flare loosely. The pads or stacks are then cut into narrow strips comprising single rows of connected tablets, and these strips are then sliced up into separate tablets with any ordinary guillotine paper-cutter, and are thus completed, ready for use.

The tablets, having been completed, may be united to a back board by pasting the upper portion of the back leaf at the desired point upon the back board, and allowing them to dry under moderate pressure from four to six hours.

In the accompanying drawings, Figure 1 is a view of a stack or pad of tablet-sheets ready to be cut into separate tablets. Fig. 2 is a view of three stacks or pads as united in sewing. Fig. 3 is a single row of tablets, and Fig. 4 is a single tablet.

The letter A designates the single tablets, which are composed of a series of leaves, a, all attached together by a line of stitching, B.

The pad or stack shown in Fig. l is composed of the sheets, as before described, each being printed with a number of rows of similar pagesthat is, each sheet has all its pages for the same month, and the different sheets are for different months. The sheets of a pad are united by the lines of stitching B, and the pads are connected at their edges by stitches of said seams also, as shown in Fig. 2. A sufiicient number of the pads having been prepared the belt which they form is then passed between the compression or calendar rollers, as before described, and the seams thoroughly mashed or flattened. The compression being accomplished, the pads are separated from each other by cutting their joining-stitches, and they are then cut into strips of single rows of tablets, as shown in Fig. 3, and these strips are then cut up into single tablets, as'shown in Fig. 4.

What I claim is- The process of manufacturing calendar-tablets substantially as described, the same consisting in printing sheets of tablet-forms for each month, each sheet having a number of tablet-pages for the same month, gathering the sheets in stacks or pads, each having one sheet for each month, sewing the sheets together on lines along the heads of the rows of pages, passing said stacks or pads between compression-rollers, and finally slicing up said stacks or pads into separate tablets.

In testimony whereof I have hereunto set my hand in the presence of two subscribing witnesses.

JOHN OUSSONS.

Witnesses:

GHILEs M. FERRELL, SETH GAYLE. 

